Wideband monopole antenna for WWAN services

Abstract

An approach to design a compact monopole antenna for use in portable RF transceivers that feature wideband performance and miniaturized dimension is presented. The antenna structure is initially designed as a microstrip-fed planar monopole quarter elliptical shape supported by a 60 × 90 mm2 ground plane bolstered on FR-4 substrate. A parasitic microstrip stub and a ground plane cut are introduced to achieve wideband characteristic. The proposed approach modifies the antenna’s structure by introducing two miniaturization steps on both the radiator and ground plane. The modification that partially removes the radiator and ground plane to enact a slot is the first step in the proposed miniaturization. In the second step, the main radiator is carefully corrugated near the tapered end of the elliptical radiator to further reduce antenna’s size without undermining the wideband performance. The simulation and experimental results are compared and discussed. The designed antenna operates at all wireless wide area network (WWAN) services from 850 MHz to 3 GHz at 6 dB return loss reference.